Many newsagents using software from Tower Systems will have spoken with Raul Rodriguez. He was part of our help desk team. Raul passed away suddenly and unexpectedly Wednesday night at home. Our thoughts are with Raul’s wife Maite at this time. For more on this and tributes from some customers please click here.
I feel for small publisher, I really do. It is tough to drive sales with a tiny or even non-existent marketing budget. They turn to the next option, trying to get newsagents to hold onto their products long enough to drive some sales. Your Local Wedding Guide Melbourne is a good example of a publication facing challenges. The issue out on Wednesday has a five month on sale! Yes, five months! The publisher is enticing us to keep the product on the shelves for the full five months with one month delayed billing. Check out the note Victorian newsagents received on Wednesday – click on the image to see a larger version. It says Extended terms: 30 days!!! It then tells us to display for the full five months!!! If this title is not paying its way, especially in expensive shopping centre newsagencies it must/will be early returned. To leave it on the shelves losing money would be bad for business. Why don’t publishers and magazine distributors understand that? Because it does not suit their bottom line is the answer.
For small publishers, their marketing budget is often the cost of getting stock to newsagents. With respect, don’t expect us to become your bank and marketing department. Our space is valuable and ought to be respected.
PS. This is the small format title I blogged about yesterday. It does not even fit traditional newsagency fixtures.
Customers are loving these recordable memory albums from Hallmark. They make a terrific gift – an easy sell for someone wanting to inject something of themselves into the gift.
In our stores serving an older population, the idea of recording more of your memories takes on a special meaning. I’m glad we got access to these products on their first round launch – we are out there competing with the majors and loving it.
It’s great to see people in the newsagency channel supporting Movember and raising money for men’s health. Here are three mo growers I am aware of. Click on their names to support their fund raising.
Margaret Simons wrote an excellent piece yesterday for Crikey about Fairfax plans for a digital rather than print future. This paragraph will make newsagents sit up and take notice:
I gather that Fairfax Media is contemplating a fundamental shift away from a future based on print, and towards the migration of readers to online and in particular mobile devices — the iPad and its competitors.
Fairfax needs to do this, more do that News given the difference in customers of both organisations for their dailies.
I urge newsagents to read all of Margaret’s article and to consider this in the context of the newsagency of today, tomorrow and the future.
Consider the Australian Financial Review. If I was working for Fairfax I’d be crunching numbers about a digital only model with a subscription offer which includes a free tablet computer for a two year commitment. I have no doubt they could beat the 80,000 or so current daily sales for a much lower distribution cost.
This is not bad news, or speculation if that’s how you see the discussion of disruption to print. No, the changes are an opportunity for newsagents to reinvent themselves, to move on from the constraints of being an agent and to unshackle ourselves from the news. Many smart newsagents are doing this already and are having a ball.
Imported magazines get a bit of a bum rap here and elsewhere. While plenty of this is deserved, there are times when imported titles support newsagents and our need to be the place for magazines. The two Christmas magazines are an excellent example of this. They fit with our theme of helping our customers get ready for Christmas. They also reflect content not readily available in Australian magazines.
We are displaying both titles outside of the usual category location. Instead, we have them located where our shoppers are looking for Christmas decorating and entertainment ideas. These titles reflect an important point of difference for us compared to all other magazine retailers in our shopping centre.
If I was given the ability to easily select overseas titles and control the volume received I am sure I would increase my range. A smart distributor would give me these facilities and see their sales increase to proactive newsagents as a result.
There in the photo, just peaking out above Bridal Showcase, is a small format wedding magazine which has not been designed for traditional newsagency fixturing. You can barely see 1cm of the cover. While I am sure that the publisher has their reasons for the small format, maybe newsagencies are not the appropriate retail outlet given what the majority of us have in terms of display fixtures.
Ten cents from every copy of New Idea sold this week goes to support McHappy Day and we are very happy to be supporting this well known and respected charity. The collateral from Pacific Magazines makes it easy for us to support the promotion and connect with the fund raising.
I am keen to support all of these supplier fund raising intiatives as the customer feedback is excellent – just look at sales of charity supporing boxed Christmas cards versus those without such a connection.
I love the new look for Gardening Australia launched with today’s issue. It is a genuinely new look throughout the magazine – beyond a fresh cover.
The different cover enables us to more easily co-locate the title outside the traditional gardening space and through this chase incremental business.
Well done Gardening Australia.
I have heard from a newsagent that one landlord is reportedly to impose an additional charge for handling the recycling of unsold magazines. For years, this landlord has allowed paper waste to be dumped in the recyclind dumpster. Now, in the era of imposing charges for every possible thing, the landlord has said that the newsagent needs to pay a premium fee because of their recycle volume compared to other stores.
This issue is not yet resolved. Hopefully, commonsense will prevail once the landlord understands where control really lies on the volume of materials to be recycled.
A reader of this blog (thanks Megan) put me onto KIZER and BENDER’s Retail Adventures in the REAL World™ BLOG. It is packed with excellent visual merchandising and retail ideas. Rich Kizer and Georganne Bender have an excellent track record helping and advising retailers. Many of the tips are their blog will be useful to newsagents. Read!
I have heard from several newsagents in the last week about frustration with getting NDD account credits paid. If the reports are accurate, it is frustrating for newsagents who are already funding the same titles now coming through Network and Fairfax. Once again, the weakest in the supply chain are paying a high and unfair price.
UPDATE (12:38PM): NDD has advised that all credit managers are still with the company. Their details are on each NDD statement. They are the best contact point for chasing upn a credit.
Interest in gift cards is increasing as shoppers start to consider their Christmas shopping plans. I am glad that we established ourselves well in this space well in advance of the season.
While the iTunes gift cards and the most popular in the Blackhawk range, gift cards from Sanity, Jay Jays, Mitre 10, Dymocks, Super Cheap Auto and Angus and Robertson are also popular.
The gift cards are being sold with a greeting card more than 75% of the time, meaning a nice margin add-on for an already high margin sale.
While newsagents cannot build their future off the sales of gift cards , they can bank a higher margin from existing shopper traffic. This is the important next step to navigating to the future – building a better business today off of the traffic we have today.
The number of newsagents selling gift cards continues to grow solidly.
The latest extension to the gift card range further leverages existing newsagent traffic even further. The smartbox range offers experiences in a unique format for newsagencies. The price point provides another excellent margin building opportunity for newsagents.
The latest newsagency sales benchmark study indicates that magazine sales declined 4% in the September quarter compared to the same period a year earlier. Of equal concern is the 4% decline on greeting cards and a 2% decline in stationery.
These declines appear to be partly attributed to a decline in overall customer traffic. I put this down to suppliers pushing their products into more outlets and on terms which are more attractive than in newsagencies.
The continuing magazine decline is concerning given that overall supply by the magazine distributors to newsagencies continues to increase.
The average overall basket size has not altered, maintaining newsagencies as one of the least efficient retailers for the basket size metric.
In the benchmark study data I see plenty of success stories, newsagencies trading against the trend as well as categories trading against the trend. for example, newsagencies with a consistent ink offer can often see double digit growth against a decline in stationery overall.
Here are the key takeaways for newsagents based on this latest benchmark data and that for the previous two quarters this year:
My view is that the newsagency channel has a good future if we, individually and collectively, get serious about what the newsagency shingle stands for.
Regulars here would know that I like Convenience World magazine. It publishes excellent insights into products which are of interest to many newsagents. It is also a useful news and information souurce on the convenience retail channel which newsagents would find fascinating and useful. I highly recomment Convenience World to newsagents who are looking for opportunities. Subscriptions are free. Just email sacha.delfosse@retailmedia.com.au. Sacha Delfosse is the Editor.
Is it just my experience or are others finding that the sell through rate for NW magazine is such that the title is loss making? Weeklies should have a sell through rate of 75% or above. NW is nowhere near this. I was surprised, therefore to see a supply increase this morning considering the poor sales data we have for this title.
MOBILE carriers could become virtual newsagents following a world-first deal.
So starts a report from Lara Sinclair in The Australian newspaper this morning outlining a deal which will see Optus promote a subscription to The Australian to customers who sign up for a Samsung Galaxy Tab device on a 12 or 24 month plan.
This is a logical and smart partnership between Optus, News Limited and Samsung. Others will follow. I suspect that some newsagents will be angry at News. The reality is that News is doing what it needs to do.
The question for every newsagent: what are you doing to reinvent your business?
We are continuing our environmental push with the active promotion of the Kyoto carbon neutral range fof 2011 diaries from Collins Debden. Our push last year has paid off with customers coming in specifically to purchase a Kyoto diary from us. It is good to see shoppers making such a conscious choice. This year, we have the Kyoto diaries on our dance floor in a high traffic location.
The Age yesterday published an excellent report on brain fitness and how completing crosswords and other puzzles can help combat dementia or Alzheimer’s. This is an excellent report to cut out and display next to your crossword magazine section. It is also worth sharing with staff so that they have more information with which to help drive crossword sales.
The report also promoted the Brain Fitness Challenge bring run by Florey Neuroscience Institutes. This is a team based online competition involving cognitive challenges. It is part awareness on brain health and part fundraising for the Institute.
With brain experts advocating more attention to brain fitness, newsagencies could become as important in this area as gyms are to physical fitness and Jenny Craig, Lite n Easy etc. are to weight loss.
Fairfax announced a newspaper home delivery fee increase for The Age late on Friday and as a result sent newsagents seeking out assistance on how to handle this with their newsagency software. They could have saved work for newsagents and software companies which provide weekend support by releasing instructions for implementing the delivery increase with their announcement of the rise.
The rise itself is good news for distribution newsagents, especially for customers they have acquired for themselves.
The Australian Women’s Weekly from ACP magazines has been named Magazine of the Year at the second Australian Magazine Awards. Runner’s up were Better Homes and Gardens and Vogue Australia. MasterChef won the launch of the year.
While I like the AWW sales volume and the changes they have made to the product, my choice of magazine of this year is Frankie. This is based on sales growth, efficient sell through and the customers it attracts to my business.
Alan Rusbridger the editor of The Guardian newspaper was interviewed on ABC radio’s PM program last night, talking about the fututure of newspapers and the success (or otherwise) of paywalls. Click here to hear an extended version of this fascinating interview including this quote:
The question is whether you believe that print is going to be that resilient. If you do then, you know, then I’m the last person to be saying that you should be bailing out of print but when you look at the, in Britain and American and most of Europe, you look at the slide in circulation, you just have to question the long-term survivability of print.
Newsagents, distribution and retail, must be thinking about these same issues as they plan for the future.
Alan Rusbridger is coming to Australia later this month to present the Andrew Olle media lecture on November 19th.
